People in the Middle East may consider the U.S. an evil hegemony that has tainted their culture, but when I look at the growth of racial and ethnic tolerance and understanding in my generation in the U.S., and see those sentiments make it around the world, it makes me feel proud.

What do you actually need? Food, clothing and shelter. Everything else is entertainment.

Hip-hop educated me about other forms of music, because it sampled from all different styles.

When I started out, I wrote the songs, recorded the songs, mastered, mixed, did the artwork, made the packaging and did the distribution, all myself. Now I understand what everyone's jobs are, who is doing them right, and who isn't.

We live in an era of consumerism and it's all about desire-based consumerism and it has nothing to do with things we actually need.

I felt I had an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of great soul musicians of the past, who made a lot of social and political commentary through their music.

The urgency for me is to hurry up and become visible enough to either influence or shame other artists or corporations into understanding that there needs to be an equal starting block. You can't rush to make the changes. The rush that I have is to change the mindset of the people who can actually influence the situation in developed countries and in under - developed countries ... and not all under-developed countries need to develop. Maybe they just need to learn and be re - given the tools to understand how to use the land that they live on.